


To Do As One Must

by taichara



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 22:06:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7481736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Responsibility can be many things.  And it can cost you.</p>
<p>Cecil knows this better than most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Do As One Must

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheTacticianMagician](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTacticianMagician/gifts).



It took only a heartbeat.

A heart's beat in silver and scarlet, and then, and then ...

-*-

It was impossible to say who first sounded the call. The watchers at their posts on Baron Castle's soaring towers, who saw the wave of death; the herdsmen racing to the safety of the city's high stone walls, their flocks shuddering and dying as they ran; the lone Mysidian come careening through the Devil's Road bearing a message too little, too late; it could have been any of these.

In the end it didn't matter. Undying hatred boiled up from Baron's very soil, and -- implacable as stone -- bore down on the castle. Anything, anyone, within its reach exited the world in black agony and rot.

Baron's pale king stood up from his throne, and drew his blade from the sheath where it had rested for long years.

_"This is my doing. This is my doing, and now it must be me that ends it."_

Just how he was so certain, he could not say. The nightmares, perhaps, that rode him down like a stray dog night after night; visions of death and rot and railing against Baron's renewal. Or perhaps it was the shuttered, wary glances he received, still, from this farmer and that tailor and so forth; those who remembered who he was, and what he used to be. They looked at him, and they saw the black and forbidding mask of one who sacrificed his very soul to dark powers.

It could have been either of these things; or both, or neither. It did not matter. His people were at risk, and his path was clear. 

He strode through Baron's towering gates, and did not look back.

But Cecil did not go alone against the dark.

Never alone; never again.

-*-

"What kind of abomination has this thing become?"

\-- A growl ripped away by the winds as Kain plunged from the skies, lance flashing, his bruise-dark carapace striped with sluggish black ichor. Marks of honour from countless prior strikes, the spreading stains gnawed slowly through the armour's plates, corrosive and implacable.

He tore the lance head free from the rotting flesh, found his footing, braced to snatch a breath and leap skyward once again. Cecil edged towards him, silver splattered with darkness, blade flashing to parry the foul claws, to drive the creature's tendrils back. To buy time for Rosa to hook bow to quiver, and drive the venom from the dragon knight's veins.

_'What kind of abomination' ... I don't know, Kain. I don't know._   
_I only know that he's come to finish what his comrade started._

The bright blade flashed out again; ichor sprayed, and Cecil pivoted away, Kain in Rosa's hands now, good hands. The beast was still hemorrhaging from Kain's pitiless strike, slowing down. Now was the chance that he'd been hoping for. Pale as silver, Cecil pressed what felt like advantage, moon-golden light from the sword pulling howls of agony from the writhing mass of rot that once was Scarmiglione ...

_Vengeance? Some last command, only now triggered?_   
_How can we know?_

_He doesn't answer. There's no mind in there, surely. The Fiends are long gone ..._

_How can this Scarmiglione even exist here -- is this nothing but an empty shell?_

Comforting thought, that; the Four had seemed honourable in their way, there at the end, and Cecil preferred to think that they fought nothing but a shambling, soulless horror, another example of the Mount's endless mockeries. Nothing more than that.

_Let whatever this beast may be, find what it wants and be done with it ..._

Blessed bolts flashed suddenly past Cecil, burying themselves in rotting meat, burning and purifying. He dared a glance back -- Rosa, bow limbered once again, eyes dark with concentration as she loosed arrow after arrow. Next to her Kain coiled like a cat, snarled, leapt skyward again.

But the damned thing would not fall, would _not_ fall ...

... instead it _lunged_ , countless ivory talons bursting from its mass to dig into soil and launch itself across the dying earth with terrible, monstrous speed -- 

Towards Rosa, who twisted away with a defiant cry turned suddenly to pain as a splintered claw scored her in passing. In the same breath Kain plummeted, trajectory gone awry -- his own breath knocked from him as he skidded, breaking for purchase with spurs and lance, across the battlefield to crouch, spitting blood, too much blood, an arm's breadth from the queen.

Cecil saw it all. And time held still.

And he knew, he _knew_ , if not what the beast was, than what it meant. No threat to Baron, no; but a warning, a rattling curse from the bowels of the very earth itself, railing against the unearthly presence that claimed Baron's ancient throne. _Himself_ ; that was what Scarmiglione's corpse hunted for. 

An unearthly thing, in all ways, not sprung from this pale blue world.   
Too much of his father's touch on him.   
It cleansed the darkness from his soul, but at what cost ...

_No!_

He saw it all, and knew that he had to act.

_It's not them that you want!_

If it could not reach him, it would destroy all that he held dear that dared to stand in its way. One way or another, it would end him. End him, by dealing death to his people, his kingdom, his most beloved ...

_I cannot allow it!_

_I will not allow it!_

The beast reared up, a tower of bone and clay and festering meat, of loss and hate and betrayal. Broken claws flexed. And the ragged maw roared a choking plague-laced victory as the thing that was once a Fiend lunged swift and final as death --

A flash of silver.

A blossom of scarlet.

" _Cecil!!_ "

Rotted talons drew away, tomb-ivory stained with crimson as black as blood.

The air stilled. Time itself, for one desperate moment, ceased to exist. For just one moment not a breath stirred, and then --

Then the behemoth crumbled to bone meal and dust, a black stain on the wind, streaking the blood-stained grasses.

And Baron's pale king slid slowly down to the pitiless earth below.


End file.
